


a simple creature of physical exuberance

by sictransitgloriamundi



Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Found Family, Half-Elves, Hand & Finger Kink, Hickeys, Librarian - Freeform, M/M, Making Out, Masquerade Ball, Stupidly Rich Character, Vampires, formal dress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 03:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17317112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sictransitgloriamundi/pseuds/sictransitgloriamundi
Summary: I know what you're here for. fancy suits. masquerade balls. whisking your crush away to a secluded balcony in the middle of a dance to make out. our DM described this oneshot as "what if dunwall was the capital of the iron islands and ruled by hamlet, with more vampires and less misogynythere's also a lil bit of like. victorian london for that classic vampire look but also somehow at the same time vikings. extremely edgy whalers."





	a simple creature of physical exuberance

**Author's Note:**

> please don't tell oscar wilde or anne rice where i live or i will be sued out of existence

He whirls, and gives Milo a grin that’s...that’s just all fang, and a more honest Milo would have admitted the delicious hopeful excitement that grin gave him.

“Well, Milo,” this ridiculous beautiful man drawls, looking at him in a way he was entirely unused to.

“Don’t you look like a virgin sacrifice?”

Milo- not for the first time - considered his mistake in coming to an event with a million beautiful people when beautiful people made him weak in the knees.

“Mr Brunneo-Incarnata, I can’t thank you enough for the generous invitation, I don’t often get to circulate in such lofty-”

Sebastian Maximilian Brunneo-Incarnata flicks a wrist out of an absolute froth of lace.

“My dear, don’t mention it. One does love good company at these things.”

He conspiratorially takes Milo’s arm, leaning in...wow, leaning in very close and leading him off in a different tangent.

“Last year, Valerian Eventide threw such a snit over the last slot on his dance card he flipped a tABLE my dEAR can you IMAGINE??? What a mess, literally and figuratively speaking. Look, the idiot little man in last week’s peacock blue, over by the second cheese table.” he breathes into Milo’s suddenly very sensitive ear.

Milo, used to observing library patrons in his peripheral, observed that Mr Eventide, in low court heels and perhaps in just a shade fancier brocade than Seb’s ermine and velvet, was only an inch shorter.

“Mr Brunneo-Incarnata-”

Seb cuts him off again by handing him a glass of wine. “Milo! Again, please, call me by my given name. I’d hope we’re good enough friends…?” and sort of anxiously trails off, trying to hide his concern behind his abalone domino mask.

Milo thoughtfully takes a sip of a really quite good fruity red and gives a sidelong hungry glance at the fourth or fifth pastry table they've passed. “Sebastian, I trust I’m in good hands tonight?”

Seb gives a delighted little cackle, and Milo falls in love a little bit more.

“You have nothing to fear from anyone here. Far more danger in the city outside, I should think, what with...recent events.”

He brightens a bit. “In fact, the general rule of fang is if someone REALLY wants the blood inside your body, and they’re one of the Family, or a dracula, or some sort of mansquito, that’s quite all right! Draculas and mansquitos are made for removing things like blood and swords from inside your body. That’s all very well and proper.”

“However, if something else wants to get at your blood, and it’s say, a murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. A really, really big frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN you body instead of coming OUT.”

“Unfortunately, this will not deter a really, really, really big frog, because a VERY large frog (and I am being literal here, and not metaphorical) is full of things like prizes, and value, and quite a lot of hatred, and it would REALLY rather like to replace any and all of those things with your blood by any means possible.”

“Frightfully uncivilized,” he mutters, and slows to a stop as he realizes he’s been dragging a increasingly concerned research librarian across the length of the ballroom.

“Have you...encountered such a frog?” Milo asks faintly.

“I have,” and Milo throttles a primal instinct to flee immediately from a sudden unknown behind him as Seb turns in delight.

“Jessamine! You are a wonder and a marvel in those scales!”

The tiny, dour half-elf regards Milo inscrutably as Seb kisses each cheek. “Don’t worry about really big frogs. They aren’t a problem around here any more.”

“No, you turned them into hideous footstools cluttering up my study, didn’t you?” Seb cheerfully grouses, and then asks “Where is our darling Olo?”

Jes turns back to Seb. “Seducing a countess in the hedge maze.”

Seb raises his glass in the vague direction of the hedge maze.

“Fortune favors the bold tonight!” and grins conspiratorially at Milo as Jes, having delivered her frog update, marches off in a slinky little seascaled number.

Seb’s eyes drift back over Milo in approval as he takes another sip of wine, holding him at arm’s length.

“I’m so pleased we had enough scales left over for this belt- and so glad you only needed minor alterations to this- it never quite hung on me right.”

Milo had genuinely thought Seb’s invitation the day before was a pretext, and excited but incredibly anxious, pulse in his throat, had shown up just after sundown to a gigantic rambling pile in Little Gotham.

However, Seb and a small army of tailors were all business. Milo had been pinned and tucked within an inch of his life.

Jes was getting something complicated done to her hair, Olo swept in and out with increasingly fewer pieces until sie was just in artfully arranged straps with seascale highlights, and Seb was having a full waistcoat in iridescent scales finished with tuxedo stripes also done in scales down the leg.

There had been a lot more food than Milo had expected in a vampire’s house, a lot of cheerful banter between the seamstresses and the vampires, and more decadence in one house than he’d imagined possible. He’d never seen so many golden dicks, not even when he’d taken that ancient art series of lectures.

It had been exhilarating, an entire world Milo hadn’t known existed, and he’d been shooed off near daybreak with a strict order of outfit operations and skincare regimen.

Seb’s face had done something unreadable when Milo had asked how to tie this cravat on his way out the door.

“My dear, it’s like any other collar- you should be able to fit two fingers under it.”

Jes had smacked him in passing, and Milo escaped as Seb yelled after her “THAT WASN’T- THAT’S HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO FIT YOU KNOW THIS! YOU WORE A TIE TO LAST YEAR’S BALL!”

Tonight, Seb ran a thoughtful hand down Milo’s sleeve, adjusting the nap and looking like he was about to say something truly outrageous when the overture started, and then turned all business.

“Gloves in your breast pocket, dear,” he said, slipping his own on. Long fingers, thin wrists, fine bones.

Milo fumbled, definitely not paying attention to Seb’s clever hands.

Seb tsked, and caught Milo’s very ordinary wrist.

The man had no concept of personal space, Milo found himself not minding as the vampire furrowed his perfect brow, extremely focused on getting these extremely snug gloves on his very ordinary hands.

Satisfied, Seb finally stretched out a gloved hand and half-bowed.

“Milo Roethe, may I have this dance?”

He flushed, and ran a hand through his (again very ordinary) mousy blonde hair before Seb hissed at him and those beautiful gloved hands flew up to fix it as Milo made excuses for not being a rich party boy with quicksilver feet, who went to the Continent every year to learn the latest.

“Milo, if you truly don’t want to, say so, but it’s just a waltz. I promise I’ll dance well enough for the both of us.”

He gently patted Milo’s cheek as he added “Besides, you don’t need to be a good dancer with such a beautiful face.”

Milo wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he was getting swept onto the dance floor anyway.

Seb was in fact a very good dancer, and he made Milo’s very rudimentary skills look at least adequate as he kept them near the edge of the floor and led them in big, slow turns.

“There you go! Beauty and talent and brains, what a riveting combination in a man.”

Milo promptly trod on Seb’s foot in alarm and Seb laughed in delight.

“Milo, you look even more ravishing, if that’s possible, when you’re flustered.”

Not quite able to meet those dark eyes, Milo stammered something about how warm it was in here.

“My dear, it simply wouldn’t do to have you faint on your first outing into proper society! Come, we’ve already done one circuit-” and they swept off into a long, cool balcony lined with lime and boxwood.

Seb sat him down on a bench and helped off his jacket, tossing it to the next bench, peeled off his gloves finger by finger.

Milo took off his mask, looked up guiltily, and Seb crashed to a halt in the middle of asking if he needed water, or some protein, or-

“Sebastian, I don’t do this sort of thing very often. I haven’t been with anyone since before I started as a librarian.”

Seb shrugged out his own jacket of it and tossed it on top of Milo’s, visibly relieved his librarian wasn’t about to faint.

“Milo, love’s far too important a thing to talk about seriously.”

Milo steamed on, steadily getting more and more flushed, fairly vibrating with anxiety, “You’re very handsome, and very charming, and I’m just not sure- why me, when you could have anyone here-”

“Love, I’m terribly delighted the feeling’s mutual. And, well, that beautiful mouth doesn’t look like it’ll kiss itself.”

And this impossible man, this half-fey unearthly beauty, leaned down from the heavens and gave Milo the filthiest kiss he’d ever had.

When they came up for air, a shivering Milo tried to chase after those plush lips.

Seb grinned another grin full of fang, and gently pressed him back into the bench against the wall of the palace. Milo found himself with a lap full of vampire.

“Oh dear, it looks like we’ll have to keep you warm. Humans, so fragile-” and he nosed under Milo’s ear, hands playing over his waistcoat.

Milo started to yank off his cravat before Seb snapped “MIND THE SILK, UNDO THE TIEPIN” and started undoing it with those clever gloved hands.

Milo, wanting to be helpful, unbuttoned a few inches of the finest linen he’d ever worn.

Seb tipped back in his lap a bit and Milo melted under the full force of a close-range Brunneo-Incarnata smirk.

“Nothing works on me like excess, Mr Roethe.” and dove back to Milo’s fluttering pulse under his ear, adding a hint of fang as Milo stiffened in alarm.

Seb immediately drew back.

“We’d have to have a conversation about-mmmm, your preferences, Milo, but I assure you your lovely blood is safe tonight, from really big frogs or anything else.”

Milo managed to gasp “For the love of the Outsider, then continue-” and Seb, pupils blown, kissed him again with quite a lot more teeth than Milo was accustomed to.

“Darling, you taste absolutely delicious,” Seb said with so much genuine feeling Milo puffed out a laugh.

It turned into a whimper, his jugular notch under attack, which would be more worrying to a slightly less debauched Milo.

“The trick-” Seb mused, ravishing his collarbone with care and attention, “is not minding the pain.”

A thousand leagues away, the waltz ended with a flourish and applause as Seb sat back again.

He regarded Milo’s neck with the satisfied pride of a master artisan, still in Milo’s lap, bracketing Milo’s thighs.

“There, looks like someone cares about you now.”

He smugly tucked Milo’s cravat back into place and fussed with the tiepin.

“I - wait-”

Seb bumped his patrician nose with Milo’s. “We still have the infinite night.”

**Author's Note:**

> it's not super clear from this fic but milo and sebastian are both bi and that is important enough to me as a bi lady to specifically note.  
> the title is from a thing a real life dean of dance said at a commencement i worked.  
> did u catch the librarian pun?  
> the extended frog monologue is from tumblr user @slumbermancer. please imagine it said in the very worst virginia tidewater accent possible, like someone who is desperately trying to be fancy but has only heard this accent before in very bad B-movies.  
> love’s far too important a thing to talk about seriously/nothing works on me like excess- lifted directly from oscar wilde.  
> the trick is not minding the pain- Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and if u are thinking "hmm it seems like Sebastian has never heard of moderation in his life" you are right. my horrible child. my large nauseatingly rich adult son.   
> my real kink personally is being able to take care of my friends properly


End file.
